The Loop (41 page)

He’d had a job getting her out of the house, what with her fretting all night about Luke being lost in the blizzard. She’d been about to call Craig Rawlinson to get a search party out when, just after breakfast, the boy had phoned to say he was fine and had been holed up with Helen Ross all night in her cabin.

What a waste, Buck thought. There was no accounting for the perverse way God sometimes chose to bestow his gifts.

He drove past the community hall and on up Main Street, slowing as he drove past Paragon to see if he could get a glimpse of Ruth, but the window was too cluttered. He parked a little short of Nelly’s Diner and walked back, glancing casually around in case anyone was looking. There nearly always was, but today everyone seemed to be down the street at the bazaar.

Ruth was at the till, serving the schoolteacher, Nancy Schaeffer, when he came in. And when the bells on the door clanked, she looked up. He could tell she wasn’t too pleased to see him.

‘Morning!’ he called out brightly to both of them.

‘Hi, Buck,’ said Nancy. ‘Merry Christmas!’

‘And a Merry Christmas to you.’ He nodded and smiled at Ruth.

‘Ruth.’

‘Mr Calder.’

She turned right back to Nancy and they went on talking about some school thing. Buck strolled to the back of the store, pretending to browse. There were no other customers.

He hadn’t seen or spoken with Ruth in over a month. She was wearing a tight brown sweater. She looked fabulous. At last Nancy was going. He called goodbye and the door clanked shut, with the same odd little echo Buck had heard when he came in.

‘Buck, what the hell are you doing here?’

She was stalking back through the store toward him.

‘And a Merry Christmas to you too.’

‘Don’t play games.’

‘I’m not playing games.’

She stopped and stood scowling at him from a safe distance, with her arms folded. He held up his hands.

‘Ruth, it’s Christmas, for Christsake, when people buy each other gifts. This is a gift store. I’m allowed to be here.’

‘Buck, in case the message hasn’t gotten through that hat of yours, it’s all over with us. Okay?’

‘Ruthie . . .’

‘No, Buck.’

‘I miss you so bad . . .’

He moved toward her but she backed off. Suddenly there was a loud sneeze. It made Buck jump and he turned and for a moment couldn’t see anyone. Then he looked down and saw a baby sitting in a little bouncy chair thing, staring back at him.

‘Who the hell’s that?’

‘Don’t you recognize your own grandson?’

‘What’s he doing here?’

‘You don’t know a thing do you? Kathy’s helping Eleanor down at the bazaar. I’m babysitting.’

‘Oh.’

The baby’s steady stare made him uncomfortable. It was like he’d been caught red-handed.

‘Now, go.’

‘Listen, all I—’

‘After all that’s happened, I can’t believe you’d do this.’

‘What do you mean, “after all that’s happened”?’

Ruth narrowed her eyes. ‘You mean, she hasn’t told you?’

‘Told me what?’

‘She knows everything, you stupid bastard! About us.’

‘She can’t—’

‘She can. She does.’

‘You
told
her?’

‘I didn’t need to. She knew anyway.’

‘But you admitted it?’

The door clanked and they both looked around. Baby Buck mimicked the sound.

‘Mrs Iverson!’ Ruth called cheerily. ‘How are you doing?’ She looked back at Buck and said through her teeth, ‘Go. Now.’

Buck left without saying goodbye, even to his grandson. He walked to the gas station to buy some cigars and lit one on the way to his car, thinking all the while about what Ruth had said. He was so distracted, he almost pulled out into the path of an eighteen-wheeler. The blast of its horn nearly gave him a heart attack and he dropped his cigar in panic and singed his pants.

Eleanor had never said a word. Not that they ever talked much anyway. But you’d think she might have mentioned it, Ruth being her business partner and all. There were so many questions he would have liked to ask Ruth and hadn’t been able to because of the Iverson woman coming in. Like, how the hell did Eleanor find out? And how come she and Ruth were still in business together? It didn’t make any goddamn sense at all.

He drove back out to the ranch, his mind flicking from one grim thought to another and settling where it usually did nowadays, with the wolves, who were to blame for everything.

He hadn’t seen the old wolfer for a few days now and so when he got to where the road forked below the ranch, he bore left and kept on up toward Kathy’s place.

Maybe Lovelace had some news to cheer him up.

 

The wolfer steered the snowmobile down through the trees and out into the open snow of the top meadow above the house. It was bumpy and it hurt his back which already ached from all the snow he’d had to shovel off the tent and then off the snowmobile. But he was used to aches and pains and they did nothing to dampen his spirits. It had been some years since he’d had to bivouac in such a blizzard and though it was only a matter of having good gear and a little gumption, he was pleased he could still handle it.

More to the point, he now knew where the wolves were.

When the wind had died, around four in the morning, he’d heard them howl and when it got light, he’d found tracks, only a hundred yards from his tent. It was as if they’d heard he was there and had come to check him out. Now he knew what kind of terrain they were in, he was coming back to the trailer to work out a plan and pick up the things he would need for killing them.

Below him now, at the foot of the meadow, a row of black cows were feeding on the hay that had been scattered on the snow for them. Beyond them, Lovelace could see Buck Calder’s car parked beside the Hicks’, outside the house.

As he came onto the flatter land and veered toward the barn, he saw that the door of his trailer was open. Then, a second later, he saw a man step down out of it. It was Buck Calder. And now his son-in-law was climbing down too, shutting the door behind him. Hicks looked kind of sheepish, but Calder smiled and waved and waited while Lovelace steered the snowmobile up alongside them and stopped.

‘Mr Lovelace. Good to see you.’

Lovelace turned off the engine.

‘What are you doing in my trailer?’

‘We were just looking for you, seeing if you were okay.’

Lovelace didn’t say anything. He stared at Calder for a moment then got off the snowmobile and went to the trailer. As he passed them, he saw Hicks pull a face, like a naughty kid. Who the hell did they think they were, he thought, as he climbed inside. Snooping about like that, uninvited. He looked around, checking if they’d touched anything. It all seemed to be as he’d left it. He went back to the door and looked down at them.

‘Don’t do that again,’ he said.

‘We knocked and when there was no answer, we got worried that—’

‘If I need your help, I’ll ask.’

Calder held up his hands. ‘Hey, I’m real sorry.’

‘Yeah, sorry, Mr Lovelace,’ Hicks chimed, like a parrot.

Lovelace nodded coldly.

‘So how’s it going?’ Calder asked, all friendly, as if nothing had happened. ‘Did you catch ’em yet?’

‘When I’m ready to tell you, I will.’

And he shut the door in their faces.

 

Baby Buck was sitting on the edge of the kitchen table, while Kathy tried to zip him into his snowsuit. He wasn’t enjoying it and was letting the whole world know. The poor little mite had a cold and his face was all red and streaming. Eleanor sat at the other end of the table, chopping onions.

It was Tuesday, the one evening in the week when Luke came home early and the only one when she made any real effort with the supper. They were having fish pie, for two good reasons: it was one of Luke’s favorites and his father couldn’t stand it.

The baby let out a piercing scream.

‘He wants to stay with his grandma,’ Eleanor said. ‘Don’t you, honey?’

‘Hey, you can have him. Will you keep still, you little monster! Was I ever like this?’ Kathy asked.

‘Worse.’

‘There’s
worse
?’

She was just getting his gloves on when the headlights of a car panned across the kitchen windows. A few moments later, while the baby was gathering breath for more bawling, they heard Luke coming up the path to the house. He was whistling a tune. Eleanor had never heard him do that before.

‘At least somebody’s happy,’ Kathy said.

The baby started crying again.

Luke came in and said hi and after he’d shed his hat and coat and boots and given Eleanor a kiss, he picked up little Buck and took him on a tour of the kitchen. The baby stopped crying at once.

‘Want a job?’ Kathy said.

‘I’ve got one already.’

‘One that has him out in blizzards all night,’ Eleanor said.

‘Mom, we were fine.’

Eleanor watched him waltzing the baby around while she finished the onions. It made her glow inside to see him so happy. Driving back from the bazaar, Kathy had told her people were starting to gossip about Luke and Helen Ross. Eleanor dismissed it as nonsense.

Luke handed little Buck back to Kathy and went off to his room and soon Kathy took the baby to the car and went home, leaving Eleanor alone with her cooking.

She had no idea where big Buck was. He was probably hiding somewhere, trying to work out how to play it when he came home. The thought made Eleanor smile.

Ruth had told her about him coming by this morning. The poor woman still couldn’t quite fathom Eleanor’s attitude. Betrayed wives were supposed to be vengeful about ‘the other woman’, even murderous. And Eleanor knew Ruth was still slightly suspicious of how calmly she had taken it all. That it seemed to threaten neither their friendship nor - more importantly - their business arrangements still clearly mystified her. Which, to Eleanor, made it all the more enjoyable.

In fact, Ruth’s affair with Buck hadn’t even been mentioned since the day Eleanor broke the news that she knew about it. There was really nothing more to be said. She sometimes felt a little ashamed of the way she had brought the matter up, asking Ruth, point blank, how long she’d been sleeping with him. Eleanor hadn’t been quite honest, for she was fairly sure the affair had been already over by then.

To her credit, Ruth hadn’t tried to deny a thing. But she did ask how Eleanor had found out.

‘You were married once, weren’t you?’ Eleanor asked.

‘Yes.’

‘How long?’

‘About five minutes.’

‘Well, that’s probably not long enough. But after awhile, you just kind of know about these things. And Ruth, I’m afraid to say, I’ve had a lot of practice.’

She spared her the details of how she’d found out this time. Of how, on that first day when she’d come into the shop and offered to get involved in the business, she’d found Ruth’s scent oddly familiar and later realized it was the same she smelled when Buck came home and tiptoed fatuously across the bedroom, thinking she was asleep. Of how she’d heard his car that night outside Ruth’s house and then found one of his cigars in the driveway.

‘There’s always some woman somewhere,’ Eleanor went on. ‘Sometimes several at the same time. Though often I don’t know who. And frankly, Ruth, I don’t really care anymore.’

‘I can’t believe that.’

‘It’s true. Of course, I used to care. And after I got over that, I’d care about people feeling sorry for me, when really it was Buck they ought to feel sorry for. But even that doesn’t bother me any longer. People can think what they like.’

‘Why do you stay with him?’

Eleanor shrugged. ‘Where else would I go?’

Poor Ruth had been quite shaken. And even though Eleanor had assured her their business arrangement remained entirely unaffected, Ruth had treated her ever since with caution and respect. Back at the shop, after the bazaar, Ruth had told her in a nervous whisper, while Kathy was in the bathroom changing the baby, that Buck had been in and what they’d talked about.

So now he knew that Eleanor knew of their affair. And as she finished preparing supper, she allowed herself the smallest pang of pleasure over how he must now be feeling.

It was another hour before she heard his car. When he came in, she was busy laying the table. She glanced up and saw that he looked contrite and edgy and gratifyingly pale.

‘Something smells good,’ he said.

Eleanor smiled and told him they were having fish pie.

27

T
hey had only kissed. Kissed and lain in each other’s arms on her bunk and talked until dawn paled the drifted windows. That was all. Where was the wrong in that?

It was the question Helen had harassed herself with ever since Luke had gone home the previous evening and left her alone in the cabin with the nascent specter of her own guilt. So far, with varying degrees of success, she had refused to allow it substance. Her needs and Luke’s, she kept insisting, had been equal. And if each had found comfort in what had happened, why not? How could some modest discrepancy of age and, all right, of innocence too, make it wrong?

She had almost managed to convince herself.

Joel once told her she must have majored in guilt rather than biology and that her true vocation should be the construction industry, so deftly did she build prisons for herself. Luke, it emerged, was the same.

In their huddled confession that night, she had told him of the guilt she felt for her parents’ loveless marriage. And Luke had then told her of his own for his brother’s death. With much passion and to no effect whatsoever, they had assured each other how absurd their respective guilts were. The absurdity of other people’s prisons was always so much easier to see.

Today, they had come to Great Falls to buy Helen a dress for her father’s wedding. She was due to fly to Barbados the day after tomorrow. In a modest emulation of Caribbean weather, a chinook was blowing from the mountains and the snow was melting fast.